Sleeping Alone

by Bretton, Barbara

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m here. What did you want to talk to me about?”

  She met his eyes, then said the words she wished she’d said sixteen years ago. “I want to talk about our son.”

  * * *

  “You can let me off at the corner,” Mark said. “I’ll walk the rest of the way.” He was the last of the students to be dropped off.

  Mr. Carling, his science teacher, pulled over to the curb and stopped the minivan. “Sure you can manage your gear?”

  “No prob,” Mark said, grabbing his backpack. “See you tomorrow.”

  The field trip to the Pine Barrens had been a total bust. First it started raining, then the police showed up and said Mr. Carling didn’t have the right paperwork from the county. Mark’s one chance to look for the Jersey Devil and it got screwed up.

  “We have a curriculum planned,” the teacher had protested.

  “Next time bring the right papers,” the cop had said, then directed them back to the highway.

  The rain was coming down harder. Mark lowered his head and started jogging toward home. His mom usually had school on Tuesday nights. She was halfway toward getting her associate’s degree in business, and he was really proud of her. Maybe he’d make a pot of chili and surprise her when she came home. She’d been acting strange the last few weeks, as if she had something on her mind. He knew she’d been seeing Sam Weitz, but he didn’t think she wanted to marry the guy. At least he hoped she didn’t. It had just been the two of them for a long time now, and he didn’t want some guy coming in thinking he would run the house.

  He remembered what had happened to his friend Karl. His mom had married a doctor last year, but the guy turned out to be a real bastard. He didn’t want Karl living in the house with them and sent the poor schmuck off to some military school in Vermont. As far as Mark was concerned, it was pretty shitty of the guy to even try something like that, but what had hurt Karl the most was that his mom let him get away with it.

  Mark knew his mom would never let some jerk come along and push him out of his own house. Sure they fought about lots of stuff, like why he couldn’t get a car of his own or stay out past midnight, but mostly they got along pretty good. It wasn’t like he didn’t want his mom to find someone and be happy, because he did. But it scared him to think about a stranger coming into their lives and maybe hurting her. She tried to hide it, but Mark knew she’d been hurt by a lot of guys in the past, starting with John’s asshole brother.

  He didn’t want to think about Brian Gallagher. Thinking about him always gave Mark a terrible feeling in the pit of his stomach, as if he was going to puke.

  That’s weird, he thought as he got closer to the house. Every light in the place was on. His mom had been complaining about the electric bill just the other night. She’d even laid out a plan to help them conserve power. No way would she go switching on all the lights before she went out.

  Sweat broke at the back of his neck as he realized the car was still in the driveway. It was only seven o’clock. She wasn’t due home from school for another four hours. Maybe she was sick, he thought. There was always some stupid virus going around town. But that still didn’t explain the bright red Porsche that was parked next to his mom’s Toyota.

  He knew that fucking car, and he hated it.

  He ducked into some thick rhododendrons at the side of the house and peered in the living-room window. His mother was in Brian Gallagher’s arms, and it looked as if he was about to kiss her.

  Mark fell backward into the bushes as his world spun out of control. Blood pounded inside his head, almost drowning out his harsh, guttural cry of pain. How could she do it... she knew what a bastard Gallagher was... he’d never been there for them before... why should he be there now? If she hooked up with Gallagher there would be no room for Mark in their lives. He’d end up just like his friend Karl, stuck in some shithole boarding school all alone—

  Blindly Mark grabbed for the first thing he could find, a football-sized rock his mother had placed in the garden, and heaved it at the windshield of the Porsche.

  The sound of glass shattering made him feel better, as if somebody had released a pressure valve. He grabbed the rock from the front seat, then slammed it against the shiny expanse of hood. He wished it was the bastard’s head. His blood beat furiously inside his veins, and the sound drove him on. He slammed that rock against the hood and the trunk and the driver’s side door.

  It was too late. The son of a bitch couldn’t show up now after all these years and take over like he owned them. Maybe Brian Gallagher could fool his mother that way, but Gallagher couldn’t fool him. Mark closed his yes, but the image of his mother crying in the bastard’s arms ripped his heart in two.

  “I hate you!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “You bastard, I hate your fucking guts!”

  * * *

  Dee wasn’t a crier. She liked to say she was the only kid at Sea Gate Elementary who hadn’t shed a tear for Old Yeller or Bambi’s mother. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel things the way other people did. Actually her heart was every bit as soft as the next woman’s. She just worked harder to hide it than most women did. You had to when you were a single mother.

  But when Brian looked her in the eye and said he refused to acknowledge his son’s existence, something inside her broke. Tears made you seem weak and vulnerable. She hated herself for crying, but after sixteen years she couldn’t hold the tears back any longer.

  “I’m not asking you for money, Brian.” She struggled to control the quaver in her voice. “I’m only asking for you to acknowledge Mark as your son. He needs a family. He needs—”

  The sound of glass breaking stopped her.

  Brian glanced toward the window. “What the hell was that?”

  “I don’t know,” Dee said. “It sounded like it came from the driveway.”

  “Shit,” Brian muttered, releasing his hold on her. “The Porsche—”

  The Porsche? She had just poured out her heart to the father of her child, and all he could think about was his fancy car? The son of a bitch should be thankful she didn’t keep a gun in the house because if she did, he’d be lying in a pool of his own blood right about now.

  He started for the door.

  “Brian.” Her voice was sharp with anger. “We haven’t finished talking.”

  “In a sec,” he said. “This neighborhood isn’t the greatest, Dee Dee. I want to make sure the car’s okay.”

  She followed him outside in time to hear him bellow like a bear caught in a trap.

  “What’s wrong, Brian?” She ran across the driveway to where he stood, bent over from the waist, trying to catch his breath.

  He gestured wordlessly toward the car. The windshield was shattered, and a series of large dents arced across the hood and over the fender.

  “Somebody got you pretty good,” she observed, walking around the car. And if I knew who did it, I’d give him an award.

  “Jesus,” he said, his voice hoarse and breathy. “Jesus.”

  “It’s only a car, Brian.” Her tone was amused and more than a little disgusted.

  He wasn’t listening. He opened the driver’s-side door and grabbed for his cell phone. She watched as he punched in 9-1-1. Anything she might have felt for him, any residual memory of love or longing or hatred vanished, and she felt free for the first time since she was fifteen years old.

  * * *

  The John Gallagher Alex knew worked with his lands. He repaired boats, took rich men out on deep-sea fishing expeditions, and watched over the marina now that Eddie had lost all interest in it.

  The John Gallagher who took charge of the Save Sea Gate coalition’s second meeting that night was a stranger to her. He was forceful, erudite, downright passionate as he talked about his hometown and why saving that hometown should be important to all of them.

  She hadn’t wanted to come to the meeting. Moving back into her house had been the first step in breaking away from John. The first of April was j
ust two days away, and she wasn’t naive enough to think Brian Gallagher’s threat to contact Griffin was anything less than serious. For all she knew he’d already called Griffin, and the two of them were watching her as she spun slowly in the wind.

  They had her trapped between a rock and a hard place. For days she’d been telling herself that selling her house to Brian and Eagle Management was the right decision, that anything she did to keep Griffin away from her child was beyond reproach. John would hate her for it, but he wouldn’t turn away from the baby, and that had seemed the most important thing of all.

  But the more she listened to him talk that night, the more she wondered if she was doing the right thing. A standing-room-only crowd packed the auditorium. It seemed to Alex that everyone in town had gathered there to hear what John had to say about the future.

  He’d presented a visual history of Sea Gate from its founding in 1752 to the present, with an emphasis on the glory days. He described the early colonists and the whalers who had helped build the town. The railroad tracks at the far edge of town had been specially constructed to bring Abraham Lincoln to Sea Gate during the Civil War. The address he’d presented hadn’t gone down in history the way the one at Gettysburg had, but the original notes still resided behind glass at the local library.

  The late nineteenth century had seen the arrival of wealthy New Yorkers and Philadelphians looking for a place to spend the long hot summers. Sea Gate was just the ticket. Elaborate Victorian houses popped up from one end of town to the other, each one more fanciful and expensive than the last. Some houses displayed ocean views, while others faced the verdant town square. Ocean Avenue had boasted one of the first boardwalk in the United States, a wide expanse of wooden planks designed as a promenade by the sea.

  Listening to John talk, she could imagine handsome men and beautiful women strolling arm in arm in the summer sun. She’d found herself blinking back tears as a bustling, successful Ocean Avenue flashed across the movie screen he’d set up at the front of the room. Time had been as cruel to the town as it had been to so many of its residents.

  “We’re not Cape May,” he admitted, “but there was a time when we were every bit as popular. We can do it again, but only if we stick together.”

  They were at a critical juncture. If a few more stores and beachfront houses toppled to Eagle Management, they wouldn’t stand a chance, and that suddenly seemed a terrible shame to Alex.

  “I’m not saying it’ll be easy,” he said, pacing the length of the room as he spoke, “but I am saying it’ll be profitable.”

  “When?” one of the local businessmen asked. “I’m on a second mortgage as it is. I don’t know how much longer I can hang on.”

  “Neither do I,” John shot back. “But if we give up now, we’re not going to get a second chance.” It was a cold world out there, he told them. New businesses failed every day of the week. There were no guarantees that any of them would move on to more successful ventures if they turned their back on Sea Gate.

  “What difference does it make?” Sally Whitton asked. “Eagle Management’s offering us enough money that it doesn’t matter.”

  “Easy for you to say.” Margaret O’Neal, a first-grade teacher, cast a sharp look in Sally’s direction. “You’ve already raised your children and enjoyed a career. If you all move away, my husband and I won’t get that chance. We don’t live down by the water. Nobody’s offering us the big bucks for our place, and they probably never will. We’re here because we wanted to build a life for our kids, and now you tell us the town is dying. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.”

  Young families were a town’s lifeblood. Without them Sea Gate wouldn’t stand a chance. But she couldn’t help wondering if John wasn’t tilting at windmills. You needed more than pretty pictures to persuade a struggling young family to stay the course. You had to prove to them that there was a future.

  She listened, amazed, as John did exactly that.

  “Too bad Eddie’s not here to see this,” Vince Troisi whispered to Alex as John presented a string of facts and figures. “Never thought I’d see Johnny like this again.”

  “I’m impressed,” Alex whispered back. “He’s really something, isn’t he?”

  “He was a damn fine lawyer,” Vince said. “Could’ve been a real success if he’d stuck with it.”

  He is a success, Alex thought. She just wasn’t sure he realized it.

  An entire town was looking to him for help. He had the ability to shape the lives of three hundred families to make an impact that would extend far into the future. In the long run John might not win the fight, but if she sold her house to Brian and Eagle Management, everyone in Sea Gate would lose.

  There was only one choice she could make. She had to tell John the truth about the baby and pray he would understand.

  Twenty-one

  “Too bad Eddie wasn’t here,” Vince Troisi said to John after the Save Sea Gate meeting adjourned. “Nobody knows the docks better than he does.”

  “NYPD Blue night,” John said by way of explanation. “A bomb couldn’t get him out of his chair.”

  Vince chuckled. “Haven’t seen much of your old man lately. I’ve been worried about him.”

  “Pop’s doing okay,” John lied. “He’s just been sticking close to home.”

  “Wish we could get him down here to talk to some of the newcomers,” Vince said. “It’s hard to make them understand what it used to be like around here.”

  “Alex has a few ideas on that subject,” John said. “You should ask her about them.”

  “Good idea.” Vince headed across the room to the refreshments table, where Alex was pouring coffee for people.

  She glanced John’s way and smiled. Smiles like that should be illegal. They made a man forget that life wasn’t always good or fair. They made a man believe he could do anything. Her hair was swept off her face with a pair of tortoiseshell combs. It cascaded down her back in soft waves that reminded him of burnished gold. She wore a pair of black silky pants and a loose blouse in a brilliant shade of emerald green.

  Her breasts were round and full. Her belly was clearly prominent beneath the folds of her blouse. The doctor estimated that she was well into her second trimester but couldn’t pinpoint a due date without a sonogram.

  So far Alex had canceled two appointments. She always had some excuse—she had a cold, she hadn’t slept well, she was needed at the diner. The excuses were as transparent as the look of apprehension on her lovely face. Lately she’d become so quiet, so secretive, that he wondered if he knew anything about her at all. He wondered what she did at night alone in that tiny cottage of hers. In that lonely bed.

  Did she dream about him? Did she make plans for their baby? Did she lie awake and worry about cleft palates and rare lung diseases and drunk drivers careening across four lanes of traffic? He and Libby had talked all the way through her two pregnancies. Sometimes he thought they’d created those beautiful boys with words as much as flesh and blood and bone.

  This baby grew in silence and in secrets.

  He had made it clear that he wanted to be with her every step of the way, and for a while he’d believed she welcomed his support. Now he wasn’t so sure. Invisible barriers had gone up around her, and by the time this baby was born, he might not be able to reach her at all.

  * * *

  Mark usually sat on the dock on nights like this but for some reason tonight he boarded the Kestrel. He used to spend a lot of time on Eddie’s boat when he was a kid, sailing down to the Chesapeake Bay or up to Montauk Point to see the lighthouse, which was older even than Old Barney, the one on Barnegat Island.

  Eddie worked Mark’s ass off on those trips. There was always something to do on boats, and it seemed that as soon as Mark finished one chore there was another one waiting to be done. He’d be real tired when they finally got back to Sea Gate, but it was a good tired.

  He missed those days. He wished somebody had told him how quick the good times
could disappear. Everything around him was changing faster than he could handle it, shifting like one of those shape-changers in the fantasy comic books he read when he was a kid. He wished things would slow down long enough for him to think.

  Mark walked the boat from prow to stern, glad there was no moon out. He liked the shield of darkness. It made him feel like it was just him and the boat and the ocean. Even without moonlight he could see the repairs John had made to the boat. The fresh paint stood out like a neon Band-Aid on the scarred and weathered surface. Sometimes he wished he’d never seen Eddie swing that axe overhead and bring it crashing down into the brittle wood of the Kestrel. If he closed his eyes he could still picture Eddie’s face, tears streaming down his lined cheeks, his chest heaving with the effort. And Eddie didn’t even remember afterward. He ragged the local kids and threatened to tell the cops every time he saw them within fifty yards of the marina, when he was the one responsible.

  It made Mark feel scared and sad all at once, as if there wasn’t one damn thing in the entire world that he could count on.

  He huddled down beneath a canvas tarp that had been tossed in the stern. A stiff wind was blowing in off the ocean, and it cut right through his jacket and pants. He couldn’t count on his mother anymore. Not after what he’d seen tonight through the living-room window. Brian Gallagher was a first-class scumbag, and the thought that his mom would let him touch her made Mark want to puke.

  The moorings squeaked mournfully as the wind rocked the Kestrel in its berth. They were having another one of those meetings tonight, one of those Save Sea Gate things that John Gallagher had set up. He wondered if they really thought they had a chance. In another year or two the marina would be gone, and then the houses, and by the time Mark finished college, Sea Gate would be nothing more than an ink dot on an old map.

  He wondered if there’d be anyone left to care.

  * * *

  Eddie was running late. The sun wasn’t up yet, but he thought he could make out the beginnings of daylight out beyond the horizon. He was supposed to have been on the Kestrel by 4 a.m. to get ready for the trip up to the Stellwagen Bank with a group of deep-sea fishermen from Tuckerton.